110 GAME-BIRDS OF INDIA 



I can find which shows this bird to be anything but rare east of Bengal 

 is mide by Oites in his ' Game-birds,' p. 479, where he remarks : — 



" In upper Burmah, where the Jack is fairly common, six may 

 occasionally be bagged in one day." 



Hume suggested that all our birds were possibly western 

 migrants ; but, as he himself added, this is hardly possible, as the 

 birds arrive in Eastern India earlier than they do in the west. It 

 seems probable, therefore, that the migration of the Jack Snipe 

 when leaving their breeding haunts is western and south-western, 

 and on the return journey eastern and north-eastern. We have 

 already shown that the trend of migration of the Pintail Snipe on 

 its southern migration and on entering its winter resorts is decidedly 

 western, and it would appear that the Jack in Asia carries this 

 western trend to an extreme. 



Within Indian limits the distribution of the Jack Snipe is very 

 irregular, and it is not nearly as common as either the Pintail 



Fantail, though on rare occasions it may be come across in 

 considerable numbers. It is to be found more or less all over the 

 Indian continent at different times during the cold season, but there 

 are few places in which one can rely on obtaining more than an 

 odd bird or two with any certainty. 



Tickell says : — 



" On one or two occasions, in very jungly places of bog and rank 

 weeds interspersed among rice cultivation, I have found the " Jacks " 

 almost monopolising the ground, to the exclusion of the Common 

 Snipe, but this is very rare ; I think I have met with more to the 

 southward, on the borders' of Orissa, than in any part of Central 

 India, on either side of the Ganges. In the Calcutta market, where 

 the Common Snipe is to be seen in heaps, dead and alive, the Jacks 

 are seldom to be met with. They seem to me to take to the more 

 retired parts of the country, such as Singbhoom, where, especially 

 in the gJiat 2}urrum (beyond the Ghats) the rice cultivation struggles 

 for mastery with the swampy jungle." 



In regard to this note Hume remarks : — 



" He is quite wrong, however, about the Calcutta market, to 

 which thousands are yearly brought." 



It is, however, very doubtful whether Tickell was really wrong 



